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Mon, 21 May 2018 07:00:06 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/cropped-blog-icon.png?w=32Thoroughly Modern Reviewerhttps://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com
3232HBO’s “Fahrenheit 451” is All Smoke, No Flamehttps://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/05/20/fahrenheit-451-hbo-review/
https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/05/20/fahrenheit-451-hbo-review/#respondSun, 20 May 2018 04:19:21 +0000http://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/?p=6988Where there’s smoke, there is often flame. Unfortunately, HBO’s new adaptation of the classic novel, Fahrenheit 451, is all smoke and no flame. Adapted by Amir Nader and Ramin Bahrani, from the original novel by Ray Bradbury, and directed by Ramin Bahrani, Fahrenheit 451 is this weird mixture of being a modern adaptation and an original story featuring a few of the characters from the book.

Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon star in Fahrenheit 451. Directed by Ramin Bahrani and written by Bahrani and Amir Naderi, the film is a modern adaption of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel. It depicts a future where the media is an opiate, history is rewritten and “firemen” burn books. Jordan plays Montag, a young fireman who struggles with his role as law enforcer as he battles his mentor, fire captain Beatty, played by Shannon. Sofia Boutella also stars as Clarisse, an informant caught between the competing interests of Montag and Beatty. Other cast members include YouTube star Lilly Singh, who plays a tabloid reporter named Raven, tasked with spreading propaganda and broadcasting the firemens’ book-burning raids.

It’s important to start things off by saying that this movie definitely isn’t anywhere near as bad as it could’ve been. Like, this really could’ve been a trainwreck. It’s always a risk readapting a classic novel, especially on a TV budget (even if it is a premium TV budget). Everything could have looked fake and cheap and cheesy, so thankfully we avoided that with this adaptation. The visuals are genuinely impressive, especially when you consider that this adaptation didn’t have anywhere near the kind of budget a movie that looks this good normally would have had. There is a lot of striking imagery throughout the film. It opens with the opening credits placed over footage of burning books; that alone is one hell of a way to start a movie. There’s a scene about thirty minutes in where an old woman refuses to leave her books, so she lights a match and sets herself, and her books, on fire. That scene is partially shown as a live stream broadcast all over buildings/walls/phones/etc where the audience reacts to it with emojis (like Instagram Live videos), and that’s genuinely haunting. All the scenes with fire and burning are done really well and combined with a haunting soundtrack. It’s a genuinely beautiful looking film. Unfortunately, those visuals are let down by the script.

It’s not that the script itself is all that bad; it’s a little generic at times, but fine. The real problem is that it’s just nothing at all like the novel it’s based on. There are elements from the book that are kept: firemen starting fires; the government controlling knowledge by burning books; the underground resistance to the government’s authoritarian ways; the growing obsession, and reliance, on new forms of media; Montag’s gradual change of heart; etc. The rest of the film, however, is almost entirely different from the novel. Gone is Montag’s wife who’s addicted to television and sleeping pills and really plays a major part in Montag’s shift from dedicated fireman to rebel scum; gone is the main plotline of the book where Montag tries to get his wife to change and, in the process, gets himself turned into the firemen by her; gone (or changed) are most of the characters besides Montag and Beatty. In their place is a more generic science fiction/dystopia fiction plotline where the oppressed “eels” – people who share books and other forbidden information – are planning to unleash a new DNA-strand called “omnis” that contains all the knowledge ever collected in books/poems/films/etc. Or something along those lines. It’s all a bit fuzzy and never really explained. Clarisse is still the conduit for Montag’s shifting allegiance from the government to the rebels, but she’s no longer a teenage girl here, but instead roughly the same age as Montag and very clearly designed to be his love interest. Much of the film then plays out about how you’d expect any other piece of dystopian-fiction to play out. He falls for her, she slowly turns him on to the eels’ point of view, he joins up with them to help them pull off a major victory that brings him face to face with his former life, there’s a big showdown, and everything ends. It’s not exactly a bad plot, but it’s still fairly generic for this genre and when compared to the plot of the book, it’s definitely lackluster.

I don’t really mind that this adaptation is so radically different from the novel. I was assigned the book as an assigned reading during Eighth Grade and, naturally, I hated it, as most students do when it comes to assigned readings. With that said, I obviously don’t have much of a connection to the book, so the fact that it was wildly different from it didn’t really turn me off. I can see how it would really upset most people, and I still wonder why Bahrain wanted to adapt the story if he was gonna change so much of it that it’s barely similar to it. That being said, I do think this adaptation was interested in covering many of the same themes that were covered in the original novel, and I think it covered them fairly well. Both the book and this film are interested in how new forms of media (in the novel: TV and film, in this adaptation: social media and the internet) are taking over our lives and eroding our interest in books and language in general. This is perfectly expressed by the images of the book burnings that are broadcast throughout the film and accompanied by emoji reactions – like on Instagram or Facebook live videos. As I mentioned earlier, the point is really driven home as you watch a woman literally being burnt alive while emoji hearts fly around the screen. Both this film and the book are interested in what makes someone willingly turn away from the pursuit of knowledge. The film does this really subtle thing that adds a lot to the character of Beatty by having him pull a Winston (from 1984) and cover up the camera in his office so he can actually write book quotes on scraps of paper before burning them. It’s a subtle moment but it adds some depth to the character and helps set up the comparison between Montag and Beatty that permeates the film. Unfortunately, that bit of subtle filmmaking with Beatty and Montag’s general character arc from being a government man to being a rebel is the extent of any kind of character development that any of these characters get. I suppose that makes sense, given that Montag is the main character and the film has a runtime of 100 minutes, but if his arc is gonna be so generic, can we really be blamed for feeling like it wasn’t enough development?

I understand why you’d need to make changes to Fahrenheit 451 in order to make it an interesting film. The plot of the book is very… bookish. There’s a lot of sitting and talking and not a whole lot of action. I get that that doesn’t make for a particularly interesting movie. But, that being said, at some point, you have to ask the question of why you’re adapting something. If you have to make so many changes in your adaptation, in order to make it work for your chosen medium, that it barely resembles the original work, is it really worth calling it an adaptation at that point? You might as well just create an original work that’s loosely inspired by the subject you were going to adapt. It’s not like dystopian-future is full of original stories. They all steal elements from each other. The Fahrenheit 451 novel has more than a couple of similarities with George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? steals elements from both of those books. I mean, this adaptation borrows even more from Nineteen Eighty-Four than the book did! This film features lots of “newspeak” like words like the 9 (the internet), eels (lower-class citizens/criminals), etc; Montag and Clarisse feel a lot more like Winston and Julia than they do their book counterparts; the introduction of Yuxie (an Alexa-like AI that also spies on its owner) to the narrative of this film is very similar to the telescreens in Nineteen Eighty-Four that also spied on their owners. This version of Fahrenheit 451 is less like the book and more of an amalgamation of different tropes that have become prevalent in dystopian-future works. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make it a bit bland. The approach taken by Bahrani could’ve worked had the movie been longer than 100 minutes or had it been the premise for a limited series adaptation of the book. This plotline might not have felt so generic had the characters all had the time that being part of a limited series would’ve given them. Being an episodic series would have given the story and its characters the room to breathe and might have softened the blow that some of these changes surely caused.

At the end of the day, HBO’s Fahrenheit 451 isn’t a bad movie. It’s just nowhere near as good as it could’ve, or should’ve, been. Enough was changed in the transition from page to screen that it’s barely the same story and the new elements that were added frequently feel like generic tropes of the genre at this point. The elements that are interesting are mostly just updates on the metaphors that were in the original book (the social media angle) or little character moments that don’t have a huge impact on the plot (the stuff with Beatty writing book quotes) and so they can’t make up for the generic plotline. The directing, cinematography, sound design, acting, and score are all wonderful, but it’s all let down by that weak script. I feel like, had Bahrani just decided to make a fully original story that drew inspiration from works like Fahrenheit 451 and Nineteen Eighty-Four, the film might’ve worked better. Or had this premise been the premise for a limited series of like ten episodes where both the characters and the plot could have been given the time to breathe and develop more naturally and less generic. But, as it is, it’s not as good as the book and not original enough to be able to be enjoyed as its own thing. It’s this weird mixture of adaptation and original ideas that never quite feels as original or similar to the book as you’d like. It’s not a bad movie or anything, just generic. And for a story as iconic as Fahrenheit 451, generic isn’t good enough.

Alongside the release of Deadpool 2, STX Entertainment has released the first trailer for their upcoming adult-oriented puppet-noir film from the Jim Henson Company, The Happytime Murders. Written by Todd Berger and directed by Brian Henson, The Happytime Murders has been advertised as a Muppets version of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and had languished in development hell for years before finally being picked up by STX Entertainment. The good news is that there’s finally a trailer and hard proof that this film actually exists. The bad news is that the trailer is a hot mess. Like, it’s a really bad trailer, both in terms of pure entertainment/quality and also being an accurate representation of the film. According to Wikipedia, the plot of the film is as follows:

In a world where puppets co-exist with humans as second class citizens, Phil Phillips (Bill Barretta), puppet private eye and disgraced ex-cop, is hot on the trail of the serial killer who murdered his brother and is now targeting the cast members of the 1980s television series The Happytime Gang. As the killings continue, Jenny (Elizabeth Banks), Phil’s former flame, is next on the list. It’s up to Phil and Detective Edwards (Melissa McCarthy), his ex-partner, to find the culprit, but as bad blood and old resentments resurface, the clues start pointing to the only viable suspect: Phil himself. Now he’s on the run with only his wits and hard-headed determination as he and his partner attempt to solve the Happytime Murders.

Now, was any of this actually made apparent by the trailer? (Hint: no.) Instead of the dark(ish), film noir style film that’s been promised since this project first started being discussed, what we got was a film trying hard to have “edgy” humor and landing so flat on its face that the ground it landed on now features a permanent implant of its face. I mean, the humor in this trailer is as low as you can possibly get. Multiple jokes about Melissa McCarthy looking like a man, a scene of a puppet stomping on a dude’s genitals, and an extended joke about puppet sex. Seriously, that joke goes on for about thirty seconds too long (and even then, it’s a bad joke, to begin with). I mean, how do you go from a film with such beautiful, moody concept art like the ones featured in this post to a film that’s advertising campaign begins with the trailer that was just released? It’s like the movie underwent heavy rewrites from its inception through its filming.

It’s a real shame because I was genuinely excited about this movie. It’s got a really good cast and a really good premise. Unfortunately, both seem to be wasted on a crummy script. Regardless, The Happytime Murders comes out August 17, 2018, if this trailer didn’t totally turn you off from watching it.

It only took four episodes, but season 2 of Timeless finally delivers an episode that lives up to the promise of its premise. Written by Kent Rotherham and directed by Guy Ferland, The Salem Witch Hunt follows the Time Team as they travel back to Salem Massachusetts, 1693. While Wyatt (Matt Lanter) sneaks away from the bunker to face an unbelievable truth, Lucy (Abigail Spencer), Rufus (Malcolm Barrett) and their former enemy-turned- teammate, Garcia Flynn (Goran Visnjic), chase the Mothership to the Salem Witch Trials. There they must prevent the execution of a headstrong young woman – Abiah (guest star Sofia Vassilieva), who, it turns out, is the mother of one of the most consequential Americans of all time – the yet to be born Benjamin Franklin. When Lucy is accused of being a witch, the team rallies together to save Abiah, Lucy, and all the other accused women. (This review features spoilers for this episode.)

The Salem Witch Hunt feels like the first episode this season where something actually happens. It feels like there are interesting situations and problems for our characters to face and it feels like there are real consequences awaiting them in the wake of those situations. In this episode, all of the main characters are pushed into making huge, bold decisions that actually have repercussions for the show going forward. First, we’ve got Rufus, Flynn, and Lucy in 1693 dealing with the Salem Witch Trials – and wildly changing history without a care. It’s always a joy having Flynn working with the Time Team, and it’s no exception here. What’s surprising is how he’s not the one wanting to change history the most; Lucy is. I love that, finally, after nineteen episodes of Lucy allowing terrible things to happen solely because that’s just how history is, finally snaps and decides to majorly change something in saving the majority of the women accused in the Salem Witch Trials from their deaths. Yes, it’s partially because she got swept up into the trials herself, thanks to her mother (Susanna Thompson) and Rittenhouse, but it’s still nice to see her finally sticking to her morals and making a bold move in defense of some of the most historically wronged people.

Secondly, we’ve got Wyatt dealing with the sudden news that, for some reason, Rittenhouse went back in time and saved his wife, Jessica (Tonya Glanz). He literally broke out of the bunker at the end of the last episode to go find her and he spends the majority of this episode trying to convince her to give him a second chance. The introduction of this plotline is especially interesting given what happened between Wyatt and Lucy in the previous episode. The revelation of Jessica’s return throws a beautiful wrench into Wyatt and Lucy’s blossoming relationship, and I adore when shows do things like that. This is an interesting storyline, even if it’s not hugely surprising. What is surprising and bold about it, however, is how Jessica was brought back and the subsequent way in which Wyatt tries to introduce her to his new life. There’s a scene towards the end where, after she witnesses the time machine return to the bunker, Wyatt tries to explain to her everything that’s going on and how he felt when he thought she was dead. It’s the closest the show has come to really exploring how these alternate universes that this show’s time travel keeps creating impacts the time travelers. For Jessica, none of what Wyatt is telling her has happened in this universe, but for him, it’s painfully real and all of that is super interesting and handled really well in the context of the episode.

Lastly, we have the plotline between Rufus and Jiya (Claudia Doumit) dealing with her seizures and resultant visions of the future. Ever since Jiya’s trip in the Lifeboat at the end of season 1, she’s been having seizures. Lately, her seizures have been accompanied by strange visions that seem to predict the future. Naturally, she wants to tell her boyfriend, Rufus, about these visions. Prior to the Time Team’s mission to 1693, Jiya warns Rufus that she saw him shooting a man in her vision. His desire to keep her vision from coming true ultimately leads to the death of the man anyway, just in a different way. This idea is similar to something featured in an episode of Doctor Who, “The Angels Take Manhattan“: once you know the future, you can’t change it. Rufus knew that this man was going to die because of him, so he actively seeks to avoid that outcome, ultimately causing the death of the man anyway. As he says in this episode: if he hadn’t been warned about Jiya’s vision, he probably wouldn’t have spent so much time dealing with the man and, subsequently, probably wouldn’t have ended up causing the man’s death. This idea is always a fun one to explore in time travel stories and the way that Kent Rotherham explores it within this episode and with these characters is ridiculously interesting. It adds another layer to Rufus and Jiya’s relationship and helps give their plotline something to grapple with.

As if all of that wasn’t enough, this episode has the benefit of something the last couple of episodes of Timeless haven’t had: a clear motivation for why Rittenhouse is doing what it’s doing. In The Salem Witch Hunt, Rittenhouse has gone back in time to make sure that Abiah Franklin dies before she can give birth to Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin was a very important part of early American history, but here, his importance is that he inspires Americans to fight against the government and authority figures. Without him, early Americans might’ve been more willing to succumb to tyranny. Rittenhouse wants to reshape history so that they have tyrannical power. Their desire for Benjamin Franklin to not exist makes complete sense in this regard, and this motivation is set up early on in the episode, so the stakes are appropriately set. Not only is this episode about rescuing all of these wrongly accused women, it’s about maintaining America’s willingness to fight against tyranny. Huge stakes. With these stakes set, Kent Rotherham is able to beautifully execute and deliver the promises set by the episode’s premise.

The Salem Witch Hunt is easily the best episode of the season so far. The episode features the usual superb production design, costume design, and acting – especially from our main cast, but it turns out that writer Kent Rotherham is really the star here. He juggles a number of really interesting plotlines and handles them beautifully, giving each plotline a sense of importance and plenty of screen time to be adequately explored. He quickly sets up Rittenhouse’s motivations and lays out the stakes for the episode so he can deliver upon the promising premise of the episode. He forces the characters to make bold decisions that further develop them and impact their relationships with each other. Rotherham crafts the most interesting episode of the season so far and director Guy Ferland visually executes that strong script perfectly. It’s just a great episode. More like this, please.

Timeless continues to be a bit of a mixed bag. On paper, I really like this episode. In execution, it’s better than the previous episode (The Darlington 500) but still not as good as it should be. Much of that is down to the fact that the stakes are never clearly defined and the motivations of key characters are underexplored – but more on that soon. Written by Matt Whitney and directed by John Showalter, Hollywoodland is the third episode of the second season of Timeless. When a Rittenhouse sleeper agent in 1941 Hollywood steals the only copy of Citizen Kane, Lucy (Abigail Spencer), Wyatt (Matt Lanter) and Rufus (Malcolm Barrett) team up with Hedy Lamarr (guest star Alyssa Sutherland) to get it back. Hedy Lamarr turns out to be not only a glamorous movie star but also a scientific wizard whose discoveries led to the invention of Wi-Fi. (This review features spoilers for the episode.)

First things first: last week’s episode. I didn’t review last week’s episode because, frankly, I was so uninterested in it that I couldn’t bring myself to craft an entire review about it. It’s not that it was a bad episode, it’s just that the premise of it was utterly boring. I have no interest in stories about racing, so the fact that the episode revolved around early racecar drivers really didn’t interest me. Timeless is one of those shows that lives or dies based on the premise of that week’s adventure. Like other procedural/serial hybrids, the ongoing plotline is never enough to save an episode if that week’s procedural elements are weak. The Darlington 500 was a really weak premise for me and, as a result, I didn’t care for the episode much. It was competent and the character development was nice, though somewhat inconsistent, but the episode as a whole fell flat for me. The cliffhanger of the episode, featuring Nicholas Keynes (Michael Rady) laying out his plans for Rittenhouse, was the most interesting aspect of the episode, and it’s a thirty-second scene that happened at the tail-end of the show. So, not really enough to save the episode.

Thankfully, Hollywoodland is a lot better than last week’s episode. There are still a number of problems, but I’m a whole lot more interested in classic Hollywood than I am in racecars, so the episode as a whole ended up working better for me. There’s a lot about this episode that I really do love. Aesthetically, it’s beautiful. Timeless frequently excels at production and costume design. Everything about the episode, visually, looks vintage Hollywood, which is perfect. The general plot itself, too, is rather good. Especially tying Hedy Lamarr into the mix. I loved the idea of Rittenhouse stealing Citizen Kane – though their motivations for doing so were extremely underdeveloped; something I’ll touch on a bit later. All of the stuff involving Flynn (Goran Visnjic) was great, especially how they further along his storyline towards the end of the episode. Best of all was the culmination of Wyatt and Lucy’s will-they-won’t-they romance. There’s been so much pining between the two of them since the very first episode that it was so satisfying seeing them finally hook up. The way it happens is a bit of a cheesy cliche, but I still loved it. This whole show is cheesy and it’s part of why I like it.

Unfortunately, for every element of the episode that I liked, there was an element that I disliked. While the idea of having the Time Team stop Rittenhouse from stealing the only existing print of Citizen Kane, the show spends exactly no time bothering to explain why Rittenhouse wants to do that. In previous (and subsequent) episodes, it makes sense why Rittenhouse is trying to change the thing they’re trying to change, but here it’s completely unexplored. Yes, Citizen Kane was a wildly influential movie, but it’s a movie. Were they trying to end Orson Welles’ career before it really got started? Were they trying to screw over RKO/Paramount? What was their desired outcome with erasing Citizen Kane from history? Who knows; the show certainly couldn’t be bothered to explain it. Without that key bit of exposition, the caper is never as exciting as it should be. The stakes aren’t established, so there’s no real urgency in rescuing the film. This should’ve been a really exciting episode that focused on the Time Team trying to save this film because of its significance, but since the episode couldn’t be bothered to set up the film’s significance, the caper just sort of falls flat.

It’s problems like that that keeps holding Timeless back from being truly amazing. The premise was so great, and the visual aesthetic was so great, but the execution of that premise was so flawed. The episode is held together – barely – by its strong premise and the interesting and strong developments in the ongoing plot of the season. Hollywoodland is a prime example of how shows like Timeless live and die by the premises of each week’s episode. The Darlington 500 has very similar problems as Hollywoodland does, but Hollywoodland’s premise is a lot stronger than The Darlington 500‘s was, so Hollywoodland worked a lot better for me. It’s still a mostly competent piece of TV, but the flawed execution of the strong premise really let the episode down. It’s held afloat by the always strong performances from the cast, the beautiful aesthetics, and the interesting developments in the ongoing plotline. But, at the end of the day, Hollywoodland was nowhere near as exciting as it should’ve been, and that’s a real shame.

3 out of 5 wands.

]]>https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/03/25/timeless-s02e03-review/feed/0thoroughlymodernreviewerTimeless - Season 2Timeless - Season 2Timeless - Season 2Timeless - Season 2Timeless - Season 2A Tale of Three ‘Shada’s (Doctor Who – “Shada” review)https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/03/16/a-tale-of-three-shadas-doctor-who-shada-review/
https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/03/16/a-tale-of-three-shadas-doctor-who-shada-review/#respondFri, 16 Mar 2018 16:00:15 +0000http://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/?p=6918Shada. The long lost adventure from famed sci-fi writer Douglas Adams. Over the years since its aborted filming, the adventure has undergone no less than three separate adaptations. The question is: which Shada is the ultimate Shada? With the release of another version of the story, it’s becoming harder and harder to figure that out, so let’s break it down in a Tale of Three ‘Shada’s. Originally written by famed author – and one-time Doctor Who script editor – Douglas Adams, Shada follows the Doctor and Romana, his Time Lady companion, as they investigate a mysterious summons from an old friend of the Doctor, Cambridge Professor Chronotis, and work to thwart the plans of the evil Skagra – a man seeking the Professor, and a book he possesses, for his own evil ends. Their adventure will take them from 1970s Earth to a mysterious Time Lord prison planet that nobody can remember: Shada. Beware Skagra. Beware the Sphere. Beware Shada. For this review, we’re gonna be looking at three particular adaptations of Shada: the 2003 BBC-i/Big Finish Productions webcast/audio adaptation, the 2012 novelization (by Gareth Roberts), and the 2017 BBC animated reconstruction.

2003 BBC-i/Big Finish Productions webcast/audio drama
The first adaptation of Shada we’ll be examining is the webcast/audio drama done by Big Finish Productions and BBC-i in 2003, produced to mark Doctor Who‘s 40th anniversary. Out of all the adaptations, this one is the one that makes the most changes. Instead of the Fourth Doctor, this version features the Eighth Doctor (played by Paul McGann) and Romana II later in her life (at this point, she’s the Lord President of Gallifrey, keeping with the Big Finish continuity of her character at the time of production). In this version, the Fourth Doctor and Romana went to visit Professor Chronotis but were scooped out of time shortly before they could actually meet him (as seen in The Five Doctors) and subsequently had their minds erased and left before actually having the adventure. Shortly before this adaptation begins, the Eighth Doctor has started having dreams/memories of the previous time he and Romana went to visit Chronotis, but he can’t remember what Chronotis wanted. He eventually convinces Romana, now the President of Gallifrey, to accompany him back to 1970s Cambridge and find out exactly why they were there in the first place. From there, the rest of the story plays out fairly similarly to how it was originally written, aside from the occasional reference to something the Eighth Doctor did or to Romana’s new position in Time Lord society.

This adaptation exists in two forms: an audio CD from Big Finish Productions and a webcast, with limited animation, from BBC-i. The audio-only version is basically up to par with the rest of Big Finish’s line of Doctor Who audios. What makes this adaptation interesting, however, is the accompanying webcast. The animation leaves much to be desired; it’s essentially a collection of still images that zoom in and out and move. It’s very clearly designed to be a mid-quality Flash-based video from the early 2000’s, and in that respect, it does its job well. Even with the minimal animation, it’s actually amazing how good this version looks. While most of the characters, aside from the Eighth Doctor and Romana, look a bit wonky, the rest of it looks surprisingly creative.

Primarily, it excels in set design. Since the animation was so minimal, the budget required wasn’t a whole lot, so it wasn’t too complicated or expensive to design really interesting sets for the various locations. The design for the Think Tank was really interesting, as were the designs for both of Skagra’s ships. The only set design that I didn’t fully love was the one for Shada, the Time Lord prison planet. It wasn’t plain, or anything, it was just essentially located on the surface of an asteroid and didn’t look all that Gallifreyan to me. But so little of the story is actually spent on Shada that it’s only a minor complaint. The sheer creativity present in the majority of the sets really made me fall in love with this version.

I actually wish this adaptation had made more changes. I love changing it to feature the Eighth Doctor. It’s a neat way to have this story happen without contradicting the fact that footage from it was used in The Five Doctors, essentially erasing this story from the Fourth Doctor’s timeline. I only wish that more changes had been made to the script to make it fit in with the Eighth Doctor’s characterization. Aside from a few references here and there, most of the dialogue was clearly written for the Fourth Doctor. There are even lines that survive from earlier versions that directly reference adventures the Fourth Doctor had with Romana in a way that suggests they just had them (instead of them happening hundreds of years earlier in the Doctor’s life). All the added stuff with Romana really made her character have more to do in the story; her willful ignorance of the Time Lords’ actions in regards to Shada is all the more ironic now that she’s the President of Gallifrey. More changes like those would have made this adaptation work better. As it is, it’s still really enjoyable. The production of the audio is fantastic, Paul McGann somehow manages to make the vast majority of the dialogue sound like it was written for his Doctor (aside from those occasions where the dialogue references something in a way that only the Fourth Doctor would reference it), Lalla Ward is superb as Romana as well. The rest of the cast, new to this version, do a great job as well. Andrew Sachs is a bit too hammy as Skagra in this version for my taste, but he’s still good. The animation is weak, but it never pretended to be anything other than a 2003 Flash animation.

2012 Novelization by Gareth Roberts
Published in 2012, this adaptation is written by Gareth Roberts and is based on the original scripts written by Douglas Adams. It returns the story to the Fourth Doctor’s era, as originally written, and expands upon the scripts with insights into the various characters’ thoughts and motivations – as any good novelization does. For the most part, it follows the scripts closely, embellishing a little here and there in order to flesh out the story and characters in ways that only a book could do. It frequently changes points of view in different chapters, allowing readers the chance to get in the heads of the various characters – something that really ends up working to the novel’s advantage. The best thing about this version is that a novel lacks any kind of a budget. Character and set design are limited only by the reader’s imaginations. Gone are the wonky sets of the 1970s or the bland animation of early 2000’s Flash animations. Here, it’s all up to the imagination of the reader, and Shada is a story that greatly benefits from this kind of freedom. How do you build a prison planet with a shoestring budget? How do you animate several aliens of different designs and a variety of locations when you’ve got the restraints of early 2000’s Flash animation weighing you down? In both of those scenarios, you’ll never end up with anything better than a compromise. With a novel, the sky’s the limit. In terms of execution, the novel is written well. At times, Gareth Roberts actually seems to imitate the style of Douglas Adams, which is a very nice touch. It’s paced well and the additional material added to the book helps flesh out the story in new and interesting ways. The novelization allows Shada to shine without the hindrances of low budgets, bad animation, or wonky sets. As a Doctor Who book, it’s one of the best.

2017 BBC Animated Reconstruction
Finally, the BBC released an animated reconstruction of the story (with animation by the same studio that animated the missing episodes of The Power of the Daleks, and newly recorded dialogue for the unfilmed scenes) in 2017. For all intents and purposes, it seems like this version is meant to be the “Definitive Version”. It’s got the original cast (or as much of it as is possible to have), all the surviving footage, the original scripts, and all new animation for the unfilmed scenes. Featuring all the surviving footage and newly recorded dialogue and animation, this version stars Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and Lalla Ward as Romana. In execution, it’s probably the closest to what would’ve been seen on TV in the late 1970s as we’ll ever get.

The problem with this version, however, is the animation. Surprisingly, the problem isn’t the existence of the animation, but the quality of it. The animation is just really bad. Amazingly bad. The first time an animated scene played, I just sat, staring at my TV, marveling at how truly awful it was. I spent money to see this animation, and this is what I got. If it were an animated webcast from the mid-to-late 2000’s, it would be pretty good, but as professional animation done for commercial release on a DVD produced by a major television network in the UK, it’s bad. It’s of the same quality as the recent BBC animated reconstructions have been, but they’ve been bad, too. You could almost ignore how bad the animation was in those, however, since it wasn’t intercut with real footage. It’s jarring to go from the filmed scenes to the utterly lifeless animation. Had the animation been better, the cutting back and forth would likely have been fairly seamless, but as it is, it’s distracting.

It’s not all bad, though. It’s almost impossible to recognize the newly recorded dialogue. All the actors sound almost exactly the same as they did all those years ago and the soundtrack that links all the scenes together does a great job at dulling the edges of the newly juxtaposed scenes. The design of Shada, the prison planet, is a lot more interesting in this version than in the 2003 webcast, too. But that’s really the only improvement on set design. The rest is disappointingly bland. I understand that they were probably trying to realistically match the kind of sets we’d have gotten in the 1970s, but after seeing the sets from the 2003 webcast, it’s just disappointing.

This version would’ve worked better if they’d just animated the entire thing. For a start, they’d have been free to be as imaginative with the set designs as they wanted to be; there’d have been no reason for them to try and make it look like it would’ve looked. Had it all been animated, the quality of the animation would be more forgivable, too. Alternatively, they could’ve spent the money they used to restore the existing footage to pay for better animation for the entire production had they chosen to just animate the whole thing. As it stands, this version of Shada is a Frankenstein of a beast. It’s nice having a version that’s fully completed with all the original footage and the original cast, but the quality of the animation really lets it down.

Which Shada is the Best Shada?
The ultimate question, then, is which version is the best version? Which Shada is the definitive Shada? Each version has their pros and their cons. The 2017 animated version suffers from weak animation that jars with the surviving footage. The 2003 version suffers from little animation, but fantastic designs for the various sets. The book suffers from having no visual representation but benefits from the lack of budget constraints. Personally, I think the book does the best job of conveying the story. The way it’s able to take us inside the heads of the characters and the way it bounces from one point of view to another really helps the story shine. I have a soft spot for the 2003 Big Finish version, mostly because I adore Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor, but at the end of the day, all three of these versions are good. If you’re curious about this story, you can’t go wrong with any of them. I’d say check out the novel first, then the Big Finish version, then the 2017 BBC DVD. But whichever version you can get your hands on won’t disappoint you.

]]>https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/03/16/a-tale-of-three-shadas-doctor-who-shada-review/feed/0thoroughlymodernreviewerA Tale of Three Shadasdwsp002_shada_1417_cover_largevlcsnap-error183shipeightcovershada itunesvlcsnap-error955vlcsnap-error290vlcsnap-error612vlcsnap-error417“Rise” is flawed, but mostly good.https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/03/13/nbc-rise-review/
https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/03/13/nbc-rise-review/#respondTue, 13 Mar 2018 23:00:43 +0000http://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/?p=6933Rise is definitely a mixed bag. In some ways, it’s exactly the kind of show you’d expect from the creator of Parenthood. In other ways, it doesn’t hold a candle to the quality of that show. That being said, Rise is an enjoyable show with a pilot that does a poor job selling the show’s qualities. From Jason Katims, executive producer and showrunner of “Friday Night Lights” and “Parenthood,” and “Hamilton” producer Jeffrey Seller, comes a heartening new drama about finding inspiration in unexpected places. When dedicated teacher Lou Mazzuchelli (Josh Radnor) sheds his own self-doubt and takes over the school’s lackluster theater department, he galvanizes not only the faculty and students but the entire working-class town. The cast includes Josh Radnor, Rosie Perez, Auli’i Cravalho, Damon J. Gillespie, Marley Shelton, Rarmian Newton, Ted Sutherland, Amy Forsyth, Casey W. Johnson, Taylor Richardson, Joe Tippett, and Shirley Rumierk. This review contains very minor and vague spoilers for the show (no major spoilers will be revealed, but general elements from the entire season will be discussed)

Poor NBC has been trying to crack the Glee formula since Glee first started airing nearly a decade ago. Their first attempt, Smash, started off strong and then quickly devolved into melodramatic nonsense (disclaimer: I adored, and will endlessly defend, Smash until I die). Rise starts of as melodramatic nonsense before finally elevating itself to something interesting and unique. If you’ve ever seen one of Jason Katims’ shows before, you know what you’re getting into with Rise. It’s very schlocky and cheesy and melodramatic, but at the end of the day, you end up rooting for the characters enough that you’re brought onboard with the schlock. The main reason his previous shows have ended up working was the chemistry between the various members of his cast. The same is true with Rise only the pilot episode doesn’t do a great job displaying that. With the first episode of Parenthood (my favorite of Katims’ shows), the emphasis was solely on the chemistry and interactions between the characters. The schlock came much later in that show and by the time it had settled in, we’d all already fallen in love with the characters. With Rise, the schlock comes hard and fast long before we’re given a chance to connect with the characters. From the moment the pilot begins, we’re hit with what feels like a bad mashup of This is Us and Glee. This feeling lasts the rest of the pilot and into the second and third episodes. But by the fourth episode, the characters (and the actors portraying them) finally start to shine and the schlock becomes easier to swallow as we’re finally connecting with, and rooting for, the characters.

Rise was advertised as a musical TV show, in the vein of Glee or Smash. It’s not. It’s a show about a high school putting on a musical, but not an actual musical TV show. The only songs sung by the cast (as of the midway point of the season) are from the musical Spring Awakening, the musical that the high school in the show is staging. At most, each episode features one song from the musical and that’s it. This isn’t a problem, necessarily, but it is something to be aware of. I went into this show thinking it would be a musical and it’s not. That being said, what music there is is very good. NBC was smart in making sure that the actors cast as the high school students could all sing. Auli’i Cravalho, fresh off her success as Moana in Disney’s film of the same name, leads the group of high schoolers and is probably the best sounding of all of them. Not that that’s a surprise to anybody who saw Moana, though. The rest of the actors cast as the students are equally talented. In fact, the cast NBC assembled for the fictional production of Spring Awakening in the show is a cast I would absolutely love to see in an actual production of the show. In fact, the majority of what Rise does with Spring Awakening is something I’d want to see done. The set design is super smart (and ends up being a very clever plot element of one of the later episodes). The show explores the risks of doing a show like Spring Awakening at a high school in a smaller, more conservative town. The risks are pretty obvious and I feel like nobody in their right mind would actually do this show as a first attempt at making their school’s theatre department riskier in real life, but whatever, it’s a TV show. The staging of the excerpts of the show we see are great. There’s only one problem I have with how they did Spring Awakening and it’ll be readily apparent to anybody familiar with the musical. It happens in the finale and you’ll know it when you see it (or, hear it).

On that note, let’s discuss the cast. This show relies heavily on its cast. The cast is the only reason this show succeeds at all (as we’ll discuss a bit later). There’s no weak link in this cast. Josh Radnor is the lead and he suffers from my inability to separate him from his How I Met Your Mother character (and how that show ruined the character forever for me with its finale), but he’s very good in this. He’s easily outshined by the immensely talented Rosie Perez (Tracey Wolf, the former director of the theatre program before Radnor’s character takes her job). Perez just shines so much in this show. She’s often the sarcastic comedic relief of a scene, but around episode 4, she’s given a lot to do and she does it beautifully. I started the show because of the premise and stuck around because of her. Auli’i Cravalho and Damon J. Gillespie ooze chemistry as Lillette (the daughter of a single mother) and Robbie Thorne (the football team’s quarterback who ended up in the musical). The two of them have the biggest subplots after those involving the adult characters and they carry their plots well. Marley Shelton and Casey Johnson do well as Gail and Gordy Mazzuchelli (Lou’s wife and son). The rest of the cast is equally strong and, frankly, there’s just too many of them to go into detail about without turning this review into an extended ramble about how good everyone is in the show. The point is: the cast is very very strong.

So, as I said, the cast carries this show because the writing really lets it down. Everything about the show is predictable as hell. Much of it feels like a rip-off of Glee (down to the overzealous teacher taking over the mistreated arts program, the football star ending up in said arts program and falling in love with one of the stars, the football team being super not okay with that, pushback from the administration of the school, etc) and the rest of it is utterly predictable (romantic drama between students, infighting amongst the adults, a storyline involving a character from a very conservative and religous family being cast in the play as a gay character – and then teasing that the student might be gay). Nothing about the writing of this show feels original or unique at all. It’s all been taken from shows/movies/books that explored those ideas better. There are two elements of the writing that feel unique and both aren’t explored anywhere near their potential: one student, Michael Hallowell (played by Ellie Desautels), is introduced early on as a transgender student who is treated like any other student (and whose storyline, thankfully, doesn’t revolve solely around his being transgender; he’s allowed to exist as a person), but that character is hardly featured outside their introduction and frequently fades into the background during the first half of the season and only is featured more in the second half alongside another character (in a very beautiful arc, but it still would have been nice for Michael to have existed more on his own); later episodes explore what it’s like for the characters to live in their town: one that’s been hollowed out by the closure of the local steel mill. It’s a kind, genuine look at how towns suffer when their chief source of jobs closes, but so little time is spent on this that it ends up being nothing more than a subplot in an episode. Both of these elements are the only really original things this show has to offer and neither are utilized particularly frequently.

It’s a shame because the book that this show is “inspired by” offers a far more interesting story than the one told in the show. Drama High, Michael Sokolove’s book about Lou Volpe and his work with the theatre department at Harry S Truman High School in testing new musicals before they’re licensed to other high schools. The real Lou Volpe is a gay man who’s worked hard at that school and created something genuinely unique, interesting, and impactful. The show decides to make Lou Mazzuchelli a straight dude who decides to bring a little life to his conservative Pennsylvanian town by staging Spring Awakening (something the real Lou Volpe did as part of Harry S Truman High School’s pilots of musicals). It seems that Rise is based primarily on the chapter of the book that talks about Volpe’s staging of Spring Awakening, only next to none of what’s in the book actually happens on screen in the show. I’m not sure why Katims and his crew decided not to just more closely adapt Drama High, as that’s a more interesting, special, and unique story than the one they’ve ultimately given us, but such is life, I suppose. The writing for the show isn’t all bad, especially in later episodes. But the first half of the season is rough and I can’t help but feel like it might have been better had they stuck closer to their source material. The first half of the season would have been stronger, but we’d probably have lost some of my favorite moments of the second half.

It probably sounds like I hate Rise. I don’t. I like it quite a bit. It’s hard to talk about the elements of Rise that I did like without going into spoilers. Perhaps I’ll do weekly, or biweekly, reviews of individual episodes in the future. Nonetheless, I do like Rise. I like it in spite of its super questionable writing. I like it in spite of its ridiculous, shaky, “realistic” cinematography (shaky-cam does not automatically make things feel more real; it just makes it annoying to watch). I like it in spite of the fact that its source material is so much more interesting than the show is. I like it primarily because I love the actors and I love the characters they’re portraying. I like that it’s showing a high school that doesn’t have access to much of anything for their theatrical productions (I came from a high school that funded their arts a bit better, so seeing how little the school in Rise has to try and put on a show with is really interesting to me). I like the diversity in the students, both in terms of their ethnicity and in terms of their gender and sexual identities. I like that the show – mostly – allows those characters to be real people and not just their race/sex/gender. I love shows that lovingly show off theatre and musicals. There’s enough about Rise that I like that I’m willing to overlook the things that I don’t like. It no world is this a particularly well-written show. It’s melodramatic nonsense and isn’t as good as Katims’ previous shows. But it is enjoyable and for as unoriginal as its plotlines are, there isn’t another show on TV showing off theatre the way this show is. It’s got a lot of problems and its pilot is really rough, but if you give the show a few episodes before making a judgment call, you’ll probably end up liking it, too.

3.5 out of 5 wands(The first half of the season is 3 out of 5 wands, the second half is 4 out of 5 wands)

]]>https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/03/13/nbc-rise-review/feed/0thoroughlymodernreviewerRise - Season 1Rise - Season PilotRise - Season 1Rise - Season 1Rise - Season 1Rise - Season 1Rise - Season PilotThe New “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” Trailer is All Kinds of Awesomehttps://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/03/13/the-new-fantastic-beasts-the-crimes-of-grindelwald-trailer-is-all-kinds-of-awesome/
https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/03/13/the-new-fantastic-beasts-the-crimes-of-grindelwald-trailer-is-all-kinds-of-awesome/#respondTue, 13 Mar 2018 17:41:17 +0000http://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/?p=6957

Warner Brothers just released a trailer for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald and it’s all kinds of awesome. It’s been nearly five months since the reveal of the title of the film and that promotional image of the cast, so we’ve all been kind of starved for any real footage or news of the film and this trailer fully delivers. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald is the sequel to 2016’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and is written by J.K. Rowling and directed by David Yates. It follows Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), Tina Goldstein (Katherine Waterston), Queenie Goldstein (Alison Sudol), and Jacob Kowalski (Dan Fogler) as they travel to Paris in order to track down Gellert Grindelwald (Johnny Depp) under the request of Albus Dumbledore (Jude Law).

This trailer does everything a good teaser trailer should do: it teases us. It shows just enough to whet our appetites but not enough to actually ruin the film too much. I really like that the trailer didn’t rely solely on nostalgia. It opened with a nostalgic shot of Hogwarts and featured a lot of Dumbledore, but that was basically where the nostalgia ended. It was a nice way of reminding people who maybe weren’t totally on board with the previous film that this is still part of the Harry Potter universe (now rebranded as the Wizarding World). I also like how colorful this film looks in comparison to the last one. I loved the last movie, but man did it have a pretty bleak color palette. This one seems to have a much brighter and more colorful one, so that’s nice.

Speaking of Dumbledore, there’s a lot of him in the trailer and Jude Law is absolutely killing it as Dumbledore. It’s gonna take me a bit of time to fully get used to him in the role, but he’s doing a spectacular job. There’s a line he has towards the beginning of the trailer where he says something along the lines of “If you’ve ever had Newt in a class, you know he doesn’t take orders” and it was such a Dumbledore thing to say and it made me smile so much. Interestingly, there’s very little Grindelwald in the trailer. I wonder if it’s to avoid the controversy around Johnny Depp’s casting for a little bit considering how that blew up after he was so prominently featured in the promotional picture from November. There’s about one shot of him in the trailer and he’s nearly unrecognizable. Which is good. If Johnny Depp can stop being Johnny Depp for about three seconds, he could actually deliver an interesting performance. I’d have still preferred just have Colin Farrel as Grindelwald, but such is life.

Ultimately, I loved this trailer. It did its job in getting me super excited for the movie. It was well edited and structured, showed off how beautiful the film looks, teased just enough while withholding enough to still be mysterious, and overall just felt magical. It reminded me why I love the Wizarding World franchise so much. For all its hits and misses, it still brings me joy in the way it did when I was a kid. It’s not perfect and the filmmakers often make mistakes and questionable decisions, but I still love it. This trailer reminded me of the best things about the franchise and has successfully gotten me super excited for the next installment.

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald lands in theaters on November 16, 2018.

]]>https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/03/13/the-new-fantastic-beasts-the-crimes-of-grindelwald-trailer-is-all-kinds-of-awesome/feed/0thoroughlymodernreviewerCredencedumbledore 2DYLpLo-W4AAE1Kb“Timeless” continues to be enjoyable, if a bit messy (Timeless S02E01 – “The War to End All Wars”)https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/03/11/timeless-continues-to-be-enjoyable-if-a-bit-messy-timeless-s02e01-the-war-to-end-all-wars/
https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/03/11/timeless-continues-to-be-enjoyable-if-a-bit-messy-timeless-s02e01-the-war-to-end-all-wars/#respondMon, 12 Mar 2018 03:07:55 +0000http://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/?p=6935I love a good time travel based show – I mean, I’m in an eternal love affair with Doctor Who for Pete’s sake – and Timeless is a pretty good time travel show. It has its ups and downs, for sure, but at the end of the day, it’s a pretty enjoyable show. From Eric Kripke (“Revolution,” “Supernatural”) and Shawn Ryan (“The Shield”), Season 2 of this thrilling action-adventure series will pick up right where we left off with our heroes in the explosive Season 1 finale. We continue to race throughout history with our beloved team: Rufus (Malcolm Barrett), a scientist; Wyatt (Matt Lanter), a soldier; and Lucy (Abigail Spencer), a history professor, in an attempt to prevent the destruction of our world as we all know it. This season they’ll find an unlikely ally in their quest to ruin Rittenhouse, a deadly organization with plans to change history and reshape reality — even though Lucy’s family has been a part of Rittenhouse for centuries. Still making every effort not to affect the past themselves, they will visit 1692, 1917, 1941, 1981 and more. We’ll be introduced to the likes of Marie Curie, Hedy Lamarr, William Randolph Hearst and a multitude of other influential people throughout history. (This review will contain spoilers for all of season 1 and the first episode of season 2)

Saying that this season of Timeless picks up directly where the first season ends is a bit of a lie. Almost immediately, there’s a time jump to several weeks in the future. To be fair, this works quite well as we’re thrust right back into the action without spending ages on establishing what’s going on. This has its pros and its cons. It is great to go ahead and be back in the action as quickly as possible, but it does rob the story of some interesting narrative threads as the audience doesn’t get to see any of Rufus, Wyatt, Jiya (Claudia Doumit), Agent Christopher (Sakina Jaffrey), and Connor Mason’s (Paterson Joseph) adjustment to life inside their bunker. Perhaps at some point, it might be explored a bit. In the context of the season as a whole, it would’ve been boring seeing them stuck in the bunker with no access to time travel. On the flip side, it would have been interesting seeing Lucy, Emma – a member of Rittenhouse and pilot of the Mother Ship (Annie Wersching), and Carol Preston – a high ranking member of Rittenhouse and Lucy’s mother (Susanna Thompson) gallivanting through time in the Mother Ship those first few weeks.

This show suffers from the same problems that The X-Files suffered from in its glory-days: it doesn’t seem to know what it wants to do with its overarching mythology. Often, the standalone adventures throughout time are very fun, but then when they try to tie in and further develop the ongoing storyline (with Flynn in season 1 and with Rittenhouse in season 2), it all becomes a bit messy. This problem became utterly apparent as the first season reached its conclusion. It’s like the creators assumed the show was going to be canceled (which almost turned out to be a correct assumption) and tried to make the season 1 finale into a series finale cramming poorly thought out resolutions to dangling plot threads, none of which felt satisfying as they didn’t have the requisite buildup to truly work, but then got cold feet at the last second and crammed that cliffhanger onto the end of the episode in order to give the second season somewhere to go. As a result, this episode, The War to End All Wars, suffers because it has to somehow make sense of all of those “resolutions”: the way Rittenhouse was “dealt with” was utterly unsatisfying in the season 1 finale and now with season 2, they’re trying to keep Rittenhouse around by saying there are sleeper agents throughout history and that – actually – you could’ve spotted them throughout season 1, too, doesn’t quite work as well as it should because of that; none of the characterizations quite work because of the speed the previous episode dashed through those various character developments, and really everything is a bit messy. The episode is, however, about as good as you could expect it to be, given all that it had to deal with.

Things get a lot better once the Time Team is reunited about midway through the episode. When that happens, it feels like nothing has changed and it’s the same old gang on their missions to save time. That’s nice. And the cliffhanger at the end of the episode teases a team up that should nicely set up the season for the Time Team to fight their new enemy, Rittenhouse, with the help of an unexpected (but totally expected) ally. There are far more good elements in this episode than there are bad, and once you get used to things, it’s very enjoyable. It’s just that the first ten minutes, or so, really has to make sense of the season 1 finale and it fails to do that particularly well. But, then again, was there really any possible way to do that well? I’d say that it did the best it could, given what it had to deal with. I give Arika Lisanne Mittman and Tom Smuts credit for the fact that the episode, at the end of the day, is still good. It’s messy at the beginning but gets a lot better as it goes on. Even by the end, it seems like the season has a vision for where it wants to go: the Time Team has to try and stop Rittenhouse from activating all its sleeper agents scattered throughout history. Yes, this gameplan doesn’t quite work as well as it could have had the show been able to properly build up to it, but it’s still a good gameplan for the season and it does make me want to keep watching.

At the end of the day, the fun of this show isn’t really whatever nonsense is going on with the secret organization that wants to be the New World Order, or whatever Rittenhouse actually is (since it doesn’t seem like the show really knows at this point). What makes this show fun is how the characters interact with each other and how they interact with the historical events they’re witnessing. This episode features some great interactions between characters and some nice character development. It’s a bit light on interesting historical interactions, but future episodes appear to promise more of those. The War to End All Wars did what it needed to do: it tried to make sense out of the finale and set the show on a path moving forward. It retained the best of season 1 while setting up new elements for season 2. It’s looking like Timeless will continue to be enjoyable.

4 out of 5 wands.

All photos courtesy of NBCUniversal.

]]>https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/03/11/timeless-continues-to-be-enjoyable-if-a-bit-messy-timeless-s02e01-the-war-to-end-all-wars/feed/0thoroughlymodernreviewerTimeless - Season 2Timeless - Season 2Timeless - Season 2Timeless - Season 2Timeless - Season 2“I, Tonya” is a Tour de Force for Margot Robbie and Allison Janey (Mini-Review)https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/02/06/i-tonya-is-a-tour-de-force-for-margot-robbie-and-allison-janey-mini-review/
https://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/2018/02/06/i-tonya-is-a-tour-de-force-for-margot-robbie-and-allison-janey-mini-review/#respondTue, 06 Feb 2018 17:00:45 +0000http://thoroughlymodernreviewer.com/?p=6882I don’t know that I, Tonya (written by Steven Rogers and directed by Craig Gillespie) every fully comes together as a film, but it’s a massively enjoyable two hours, for sure. It’s mainly due to extraordinary performances from the cast – especially Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding and Allison Janey as her mother, LaVona Golden – that the film ends up being as good as it is. Narratively, it’s a bit all over the place. Both the framing of the story – as though the filmmakers are interviewing the people involved in the plot – and the occasional literal interruption of scenes by the various characters breaking the fourth wall to address the audience are very clever and give the film a sense of humor and narrative thrust the whole film. I wanna be clear that I, Tonya is a very enjoyable film. The actors are great, the dialogue is witty and sharp, the script is often very clever and very funny, and the cinematography is frequently stunning – especially during the scenes reenacting one of Tonya Harding’s figure skating performances.

I just don’t know that the actual plot of the film ever fully comes together. I’m not sure what the movie was trying to say about the whole Nancy Kerrigan incident. I think the film was operating under the assumption that Harding, herself, was mostly innocent, and the whole thing was the fault of her ex-husband Jeff (Sebastian Stan) and his idiot friend Shawn (Paul Walter Hauser). This thesis would make sense in the context of the film as a frequent, recurring theme is how Tonya never takes responsibility for her own actions. Her poor scores are always someone else’s fault; anytime anything goes wrong, it’s never her fault. So, maybe the film is extending that theme to cover the Nancy Kerrigan incident. It’s not Tonya’s fault that it happened, even though she knew about it. I just don’t think the film really makes that clear. Still, even if the film doesn’t ever completely come together narratively and thematically, it’s still a lot of fun. It’s funny, beautiful to look at, filled with impressive performances from talented actors and actresses, and it’s a good way to spend two hours.

Disney and Lucasfilm have released the first trailer for Solo: A Star Wars Story and it doesn’t look all that good. It’s kind of a mess, to be honest. Alden Ehrenreich doesn’t feel remotely like Han Solo in this trailer and it’s easily apparent why Disney reportedly had to hire an acting coach for him for this film. The visuals are nice, and Donald Glover as Lando looks like a lot of fun, but otherwise, it just looks kinda meh. Star Wars has gotten great at producing great trailers and mediocre movies and nothing in this trailer gives me the impression that Solo: A Star Wars Story is about to change that. I’m not sure if the film is setting out to be a comedy or an action movie (or both), but if it’s a comedy, it seems even stranger that Lucasfilm fired the original directors of the movie, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, given their comedic background. I dunno really what to make of this trailer or the movie. The movie utterly failed at piquing my interest or making me excited for the movie. Unless the quality of future trailers increases dramatically, I won’t be seeing this film in theaters.

A more in-depth review of the trailer can be found on my YouTube channel or in the video below: